If you want to be a scholar, you have to know your field. The seminal works, the major contributions, the game-changing periods, the ebb and flow of dialogue throughout the decades or centuries or millennia. You have to join the conversation.
There’s one problem with this (well, more than one, but one I’m going to talk about here). Embed yourself too deeply in the field and saturate yourself too exclusively in the literature and you’ll find that your questions, categories, and curiosity are controlled.
Now, I’m not trumpeting naivete and bombasting knowledge. The benefits of being well-read and well-informed far outweigh most alternatives.
But what if the accepted categories are one too many or two too few? What if the tightly drawn lines should actually be blurred? What if the common antitheses, or the four major views, or the six accepted premises are distorted? Might the two antitheses have points of harmony and reconciliation? Could it be that none of the four major views best accounts for the evidence or best answers the problems? Might we find, upon further and deeper and out-of-the-box inspection, that most of the six accepted premises hold little water?
What if we’re getting diluted answers because we’re polluting the questions?
This isn’t a spirit-of-the-age, question-everything rant. I want to read well and widely, know my chosen fields, and engage in the great dialogues of the ages. But I want to be careful, and part of being careful means pulling back the curtains, poking at the premises, and questioning the questions.
There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are plenty of scholarly field-stones hiding gems of insight from generations of young explorers. Those who have gone before tell us to step on these proven stones to reach knowledge. But every so often we should tip them up and take a long glance underneath before trodding dutifully down the well-trodden path. It might just be that the treasure’s been trampled by the footpath and drowned out by the footnotes.
I don’t want to be original, if original means insatiable inventiveness or intellectual independence or chronological snobbery. But if truth and life are as dazzlingly deep and as dancingly complex as the Bible and my soul are telling me, then this whole shebang should be one great adventure.
I want to drive the open road of inquiry and the scenic route of exploration, not just circle the cul-de-sac of established scholarship.
And ultimately, against all postmodern sensibilities, I want the aerial view. Seeking it, with perpetual humility and relentless effort, is the long path that rises toward wisdom.
Why Do We Gossip? (Part 3)
March 19, 2012
Few experiences are more maddening than discovering that someone’s been gossiping about you. But if we’re so disturbed when we discover that people (especially friends) are speaking negatively about us, why do we so freely speak disparagingly about others? I mentioned in the last post that (1) gossip is often our misguided attempt at justice and that (2) gossip is often an expression of our cowardice. Here are four more reasons why gossip saturates our communities and fills our conversations.
3. Gossip appeals to our comparative tendencies. Gossip is appealing partially because we love to look back down the ladder at those who are (we think) below us. We feel righteous when we see another person condemned. We feel affirmed when we see someone else denied. We feel accepted when we see someone else rejected. We especially like to hear that larger-than-life characters have feet of clay, which is why gossip often centers on famous figures. Gossip appeals to our desire to separate ourselves from the pack, and to turn attention away from our own sins and failures by focusing attention on others.
4. Gossip appeals to our fear of man. Gossip is the coward’s way of condemning sin. But additionally, listening to gossip is a way of affirming the person who’s sharing it. Gossip is a team sport — it can’t happen alone — so peer pressure is always a factor. It can be difficult to turn away from gossip in the moment because (a) we’re being invited into a special club and (b) we don’t want to reject the person who’s just accepted us. Nonetheless, we must reject gossip.
5. Gossip appeals to our desire to be seen as wise and discerning. When someone begins talking about someone in a way that we can affirm from our own experience, the temptation is to affirm what’s being said and to share in the gossip because we don’t want to be seen as undiscerning. “Don’t you see that in her?” “Haven’t you experienced that side of him?” “I mean, everyone knows that about her.” Not jumping on the bandwagon can make you appear naive. So we often sacrifice the reputations of others in order to save ourselves — the exact antithesis of the gospel paradigm.
6. Gossip appeals to our lust for power. Secrets are power. We all know this from childhood. When you hold a secret, those who aren’t in the know are at your mercy. We all love to be in the know. We feel like we belong, like we’re on the inside, like we’re wearing the badge and know the password and have the access. Discretely distributing the poisonous candy of gossip is a great way to establish yourself as a beneficient insider whose friendship is well worth pursuing if only for the intel. But once again, this kind of clubby, cliquish, secretive mentality runs counter to the welcoming current of the gospel where we invite others freely into our lives without dangling secrets that should remain concealed and confidential.
Why Do We Gossip? (Part 2)
March 15, 2012
Gossip is a weapon of mass destruction. It bites, claws, and maims its unsuspecting victims. The gossip is a murderer of reputations and a divider of relationships. Yet if gossip is so destructive and divisive, why do we do it? Why are our news feeds and our communities and our conversations so saturated with gossip? The well of the human heart is dug deep, so this post and the next will represent a few forays into the subterranean waters of gossip. Always best to evaluate and purify the spring so that the stream comes out pure.
1. Gossip is often our misguided attempt at justice. Gossip is accusation, and accusation is a form of justice. When we gossip, we’re directing blame and guilt toward someone. We’re able to punish them by publicly posting their crimes. But vengeance is not ours (Rom 12:19). To combat the vengeful spirit that fuels gossip, we must remember the last scenes of the gospel: the judgment of God against all wickedness (and his vindication of all righteousness). God will judge all people in the end (and without partiality). On that day, the curse that will fall upon their heads will be far greater than any curse our words can enact, and the temporary shame that even believers will feel for our forgiven sins will far outweigh any shame that could be directed our way through earthly gossip. Judgment belongs to the Lord. There is some judging that we are meant to do now (e.g., 1 Cor 5:1-13; 1 Tim 3:10), but gossip does not fall into this category.
2. Gossip is often an expression of our cowardice. We’re usually willing to say difficult things about people because it’s easy, but we’re often unwilling to say difficult things to people because it’s hard. But “faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov 27:6). Sometimes, it’s not the content of the gossip that’s the problem, but the direction of the gossip. Gossipy information (when it’s factual) should be directed to the person. When we talk about people’s sin, most often those people ought to be the recipient of our speech instead of the object of our speech.
Speaking hard things to someone has a way of purifying the content. You know you can’t get away with caricature, satire, sarcasm, ridicule, or purposeful misrepresentation like you can when you’re gossiping. You know you must present what you’re saying in a truthful, proportional, and persuasive way if you want to gain a hearing.
Another expression of cowardice is when we recount our conversations with an intensity and pointedness which we never expressed with the person in question. We then offer qualifiers: “I mean, I didn’t actually say it like that, but I told him what I thought.” This may be acceptable if you’re just offering a summary. But when you’re talking about a level of candidness, honesty, pointedness, and harshness, you’re not treating the person fairly. You’re talking about them in a way that you weren’t willing to talk to them.
Sadly, gossip is effective for masking our cowardice because gossip seems and sounds courageous. Gossip masks itself as a noble advance for truth — you’re waving the banner for integrity, righteousness, and justice. So you can sound like the righteous prophet expressing indignation over sin and wickedness without ever standing face to face with the source of that evil and addressing it biblically.
11 Questions about Gossip
March 12, 2012
- I wonder what percentage of my words each day either function as gossip or flow from a gossip’s heart?
- What if I valued others’ reputations more than my own?
- What if I silently asked for a pure heart before speaking negatively about someone?
- How much would I edit my words if I determined only to communicate facts about people and to avoid speculation, assumption, and motive-judging?
- What would happen if I called for a timeout each time a conversation veered toward unproven speculation or unnecessary negativity about someone?
- How awkward would my conversations become if I determined not to hear gossip and slander?
- How might I speak about others if I were presented with a book containing every negative word that has been spoken about me in the past year?
- How might I change my speech if I were to see an artistic rendering of the damage my words have done over the years?
- What percentage of church splits have been influenced by gossip and slander?
- What if I objected as passionately and immediately to the slander of others as I do to others’ slander of me?
- What if I only spoke of others as I would like them to speak of me?
